Art Brussels 2025 Is Keeping Up with Its European Art Fair Cousins

Art Brussels returned for its 41st edition from April 24th through 27th, held inside the Brussels Expo Hall on the vast stretch of the Heizel Plateau in Laeken, in the northwest of the Belgian capital. The Art Deco building, originally intended for the Brussels International Exposition in 1935, still retains its sense of officialdom as it looks down at the city’s iconic Atomium structure.

While the fair is often overshadowed by its more ostentatious European art fair cousins, it continues to assert itself as a crucible for contemporary art, thanks to a strong breadth of exhibiting galleries and an emphasis on curation. “Celebrating renowned artists is as essential to us as championing emerging artistic voices,” said the fair’s managing director Nele Verhaeren.

With its 2025 edition, Art Brussels positioned the city not just as a political center but as a cultural capital, bringing 165 galleries from 35 countries (38% of which were debutants), which together encompassed works by more than 800 artists. The fair featured five curated sections: Prime, Solo, Discovery, ’68 Forward, and Invited, which, taken together with a packed program, made an enriching art fair experience. Leading a tour of the fair, Verhaeren explained how she and her team “want the fair to be readable for everyone.”

In an attempt at offering some fluidity to the fair’s formalities, French artist Céline Condorelli’s pleated curtain reimagined the entrance as a stage. Between the established and emerging booths, meanwhile, was a walkthrough archive created by Juan d’Oultremont, where artists and audiences could take stock of a past and present. In a commitment to fostering experimentation, the fair also introduced two major initiatives. First, The Screen, a curated video art section, selected by KANAL-Centre Pompidou’s Eliel Jones, together with Brussels-based filmmaker Alex Reynolds. Here, six projects were featured from participating galleries, including Galerie Kandlhofer and Harlan Levey Projects, in a selection of works that the curators said “all play with the documentary and experimental essay form, at times rubbing with the personal and fictional.”

The other new section, Monumental Artworks, mirrored what has become increasingly commonplace in other international fairs: an exhibition of large-scale artworks. Curated by public art expert Carine Fol, the dedicated section features works by the likes of Willem Boel, Hilde Overbergh, and Marisa Ferreira.

Empathy for the Devil (series) 6, 2025
Mircea Suciu

Keteleer Gallery

Study for ‘Disintegration’ 33, 2024
Mircea Suciu

Keteleer Gallery

At the main fair, highlights abounded across booths. Works of merit included Kai-Chung Chang’s Ces lointaines se répètent no. 37 (2025) at Romero Paprocki; Guy Van Bossche’s Fuck Freedom (2025) and Mircea Suciu’s “Fatigue” series at Keteleer Gallery; and Bendt Eyckermans’s Emblems Lost (2025) at Mendes Wood DM (the artist is also the subject of a solo show at the gallery’s Brussels space). Further standouts included Muller Van Severen’s Frame 23 (2024) at Tim Van Laere Gallery, Markus Ákesson’s Spiritus (2025) at Berg Gallery, Angela de la Cruz’s Standing Box with Small Box (2016) at Wetterling Gallery, and Guillermo Mora‘s untitled sculptural paintings at Irène Laub Gallery.

The fair is also notable for its series of prizes, which provided both a measure of the fair’s artistic focus and the quality of works on view. The 75th anniversary of the Belgian Art Prize was marked with a special edition, “Back to the Future,” which featured eight dual presentations between former laureates of the prize and artists who have never participated. Presentations here included Els Dietvorst and Flor Veronica J. Maesen, and Pieter Vermeersch and Le Chauffage.

This year’s Solo Prize of €15,000 ($17,036) went to Mendes Wood DM’s Julien Creuzet. The artist’s installation addresses his French Caribbean heritage with suspended sculptures and textual interventions set against a wallpaper of abstracted imagery, all of which appears to have come from the ocean floor. The work is a testament to centuries of forced and fleeing migration, foregrounding the artist’s own visual emancipation. The Discovery Acquisition Prize, focused on supporting museum collections, was awarded to FRED&FERRY’s Thomas Verstraeten for his video work URBI ET ORBI (2024) and accompanying scaled-up model, which had viewers believe they were in a theatre. This year’s museum of choice was the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

Other prizes included The ’68 Forward Prize booth—awarded to a presentation in the fair’s section dedicated to established and overlooked artists—was given to Ewa Partum and Ewa Opalka Gallery for the Polish artist’s minimal examination of institutional and market structures. And The Invited Prize—awarded to a presentation in the fair’s emerging gallery section—was given to London’s Night Café, for a beautifully curated booth of six contemporary artists whose practices cut bridged themes of memory, nostalgia, and identity across mediums.

Undergirded by a strong domestic collector base and with an increasingly international outlook, Art Brussels this year also appeared to yield strong sales across galleries from initial reports. A snapshot of sales was led by local blue chip gallery Xavier Hufkens, which sold a work by Tracey Emin for £1 million ($1.33 million), as well as “multiple sales” from its solo presentation of Walter Swennen for prices between €25,000 ($28,388) and €110,000 ($124,910). The gallery also sold a work by Cassi Namoda for €60,000 ($68,133), and a sculpture by Thomas Houseago for $58,000. Other notable sales included three works by the American artist Jeff Kowatch for €18,000 ($20,439), €16,000 ($18,168), and €12,000 ($13,626), respectively, at the booth of Galerie La Forest Divonne, which also sold a bronze by Belgian sculptor Catherine François for €30,000 ($34,066) and a painting by Guy de Malherbe for €35,000 ($39,744). Antwerp’s Keteleer Gallery sold eight works from Mircea Suciu’s solo stand, and 11 works from their main stand to existing and new collectors in Belgium, with two works for over €30,000 ($34,066) and two for “well over” €50,000 ($56,777).

And in a sign of the collecting composition at the fair, local gallerist Rodolphe Janssen reported selling 20 works on the first day of the fair: some 60% to international clients and 40% to Belgian collectors. As it settles into its fifth decade, Art Brussels is looking forward, and this year’s edition proved that there is plenty to be optimistic about.